RHS Recalibrated

RHS Recalibrated is the result of years of work refining and correcting the configs of RHS – one of Arma 3’s most widely used mods, but also one with a lot of legacy issues under the hood. Focusing on realism, bug fixes, and consistency, this project rebuilds and fixes a huge range of weapon and ammo configs, addressing everything from unrealistic ballistics and broken damage scaling to inconsistent weights and missing fragmentation. In my mind, this is a mod that any player benefits from.

– In RHSUSAF, most rifle rounds have unrealistically low airFriction-values, making them extremely overpowered when ACE Advanced Ballistics (AB) is disabled, when used by AI, or when fired from vehicles. For example, without AB the M855 round aerodynamically behaves like a .300 Winchester Magnum round, retaining supersonic velocity to over 1250 meters when fired from an M4 (IRL this would be about 600 meters). The M16 with its longer barrel actually outperforms sniper rifles like the M2010. All 5.56 and 7.62×51 ammo suffers from similar misconfiguration – a major reason why the U.S. faction feels disproportionately deadly. Interesting how the most popular mod on the Workshop has completely broken ballistics for what is probably its most commonly used ammo types.

– The suppression radius settings for many ammunition types are misconfigured. Most notably, all 7.62×51 ammunition has the same suppression radius as pistol rounds, making it less effective in suppression than smaller calibers such as 5.56.

– 5.56 and 7.62 EPR in RHS are basically just copies of older ball types like M855 and M80, almost completely missing their real-world advantages in penetration and terminal performance. In this mod, EPR acts as it should: hard-hitting, barrier-blind, and fast (while still balanced against other ammo types).

– The 14.5×115 mm round is effectively just a reskinned .50 cal – with identical damage, similar penetration as 12.7×108 mm, and no difference in suppression power. This mod gives it a distinct role, placing it between .50 cal and 20 mm weapons in terms of armor penetration, overall lethality and suppression, according to real life performance data. IRL, the 14.5 round has roughly twice the kinetic energy of a .50 cal – this is now properly simulated.

– Some MP7 ammo does more damage than rifle rounds. These are adjusted to fit their true role and capabilities.

– Overhauls ballistics and damage configs for a wide range of ammunition, from small arms to cannon shells. Unrealistic, missing or placeholder values are replaced with real-world performance data or well-reasoned estimates. Dozens of projectiles now behave much closer to how they would in real life.

– Massive overhaul of indirectHit and indirectHitRange values for pretty much all explosives. In vanilla RHS, explosive damage is wildly inconsistent – many smaller munitions unrealistically outperform much larger ones. This mod rewrites those values from the ground up, tying explosive power to real-world filler mass instead of arbitrary numbers. Many explosives have had their blast damage slightly reduced, but fragmentation – now configured for dozens of previously unconfigured munitions – is in general more dangerous. This shift toward a more fragmentation-dominant damage model better reflects how modern explosives actually work. Some examples of previously broken values (all now fixed):

• OG-7V rockets of the RPG-7 had a wider damage radius than some 125 mm HE tank shells.
• Rifle grenades in general were very overpowered (this is also an issue in vanilla, but RHS exaggerates rifle grenade power even more), with some having a bigger damage radius than 70 mm aircraft rockets, despite having about 3 % of the explosive filler of the rockets. IRL, 40 mm rifle grenades have very little explosive filler (even the lightest hand grenades usually have more) and as such have been nerfed accordingly.
• The D-30 122 mm howitzer shells had very similar damage values to 155 mm howitzers, despite the latter having over twice the explosive filler.
• Aircraft bombs were in general extremely underpowered, with for example the FAB-250 having a smaller damage radius than 155 mm howitzers, despite IRL having 10x the explosive filler.
• The 3UOF8 30 mm shell does over 4 times as much damage as the M792 25 mm shell, despite only having 50 % more filler IRL.

– Adds over 50 new ACE3 fragmentation configs for munitions that were missing these configs. Even many HEAT weapons now have fragmentation configs (by default, none of them fragment), making them marginally effective against infantry, as they realistically should be. Dedicated HE shells are still much more effective against soft targets.

– Corrects the weight of hundreds of different magazines, items and weapons to their RL values. Generally speaking stuff is a bit heavier now, but there are many things that have been lightened too. In addition to added realism, this also fixes a lot of general inconsistency and balance issues with ammo weight. For example, by default in RHS the ammo for the M240 weighs half of what PK ammo weighs, despite them being (almost) the same caliber. All magazine weight calculations are based on real-world cartridge weights, i.e the same magazine loaded with heavy sniper rounds now weighs more than one loaded with standard ball. For MG belts, link weight is also included.

– Complete overhaul of vest armor values. All armor now matches real-world performance within Arma’s limits, calibrated to ACE Medical wound types. Vests are generally nerfed (e.g 6B45: 28→20, IOTV: 28→21).

– Nearly all helmets in RHS were effectively clones with identical stats. This mod gives them distinct, real-world armor and weight values, balanced with vanilla.

– Armor piercing rounds behave more consistently. In RHS they are a bit all over the place; some are just straight up better than any hollow point designs in the same caliber, dealing more damage AND more penetration. Generally speaking, AP rounds now consistently do less damage but pen more than FMJ/HP.

– Accuracy tweaks for some weapons. Especially machinegun accuracy is nerfed (this is not just for the sake of making it easier to play against machineguns, but based on RL sources of MG accuracy).

– If you are playing with NIArms, this adds RHS ammo types for several NIArms magazines to ensure cross-mod consistency, as NIArms configs are even more inconsistent than in RHS.

– A small patch for 3CB Factions is included. It fixes some stuff in that mod in a similar fashion and ensures maximum compatibility with this mod.

– Adds a SCAR-H and SR-25 chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor with realistic ammo and recoil configs

– Lots of small cleanups, tweaks, and fixes – too many to list. Check the change logs for more.

ACE3 is required mainly due to the fact that it overrides many of my values if I do not require it. Weapons Balance RHS is also required to provide a solid base for consistent mass values.

I highly recommend pairing this mod with my other mod Vanilla Config Tweaks. While it is not a hard dependency, this mod is designed with Vanilla Config Tweaks in mind and relies on it for certain aspects.

Bagigi’s MG Recoil Reducer is also an excellent companion mod for my mod. Since MG accuracy is nerfed in this mod, the recoil reducer will still enable the machine guns to deliver accurate long-distance fire, but at extreme ranges you will be limited to area targets like IRL.

APL-SA
https://www.bohemia.net/community/licenses/arma-public-license-share-alike